Full-time work eludes thousands in Massachusetts

Eli Sherman Wicked Local @Eli_Sherman

Sunday

May 5, 2019 at 5:30 PMMay 5, 2019 at 5:30 PM

Mary Flaherty is having a tough time finding a full-time job.

The 60-year-old says she’s applied for up to 100 jobs since September, but rarely gets a call back, which surprises her considering widespread public complaints from the business community about trouble finding workers amid a tight labor market.

In recent years, Flaherty, of North Reading, has worked part-time jobs to make ends meet. She’s worked in real estate as a buyer’s agent and more recently stuffed envelopes for some extra cash. But she’d prefer a full-time job to build some security before retiring.

“I could go back to stuffing envelopes if I’m desperate, but it seems like wasted talent to me,” she said. “I could do so much more.”

The story may sound like an anomaly in Massachusetts, where the March unemployment rate of 3 percent was well below the national level of 3.8 percent, and nearing its lowest point in nearly two decades.

But 113,800 people are counted as unemployed in the Bay State, and some people – including John Dorrer, a New England labor economist – say the number should be roughly double after accounting for people who have fallen out of the labor force altogether.

This group, Dorrer said, is too often overlooked, especially during good economic times.

“I call them the ‘forgotten workforce,’” Dorrer said. “The people who are being left behind are the people who are increasingly alienated from the economy.”

And while Massachusetts employment has returned to levels realized prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent Great Recession, when unemployment spiked across the country, the number of people like Flaherty who are underemployed – meaning they work part time, but want full-time work – remains stubbornly high in the Bay State.

“This is the only measure that’s still higher than it was before the recession,” said Alan Clayton-Matthews, associate professor of economics at Northeastern University in Boston.

Clayton-Matthews, who tracks Massachusetts employment data released monthly, said there are likely a couple factors contributing to underemployment in Massachusetts, which currently exceeds 100,000 people compared to about 70,000 people in 2007.

The first, he explained, is related to an increase in “just-in-time” labor, a wonky term for a simple concept meaning that employers hire temporary workers when needed.

The staffing practice has become easier thanks to advancements in scheduling technology, which is good news for a company’s bottom line because it can be more efficient, but less fortunate for employees in search of a consistent paycheck.

“Employers can call their employees just when they need them and that may have resulted in fewer jobs being full time than there were before,” Clayton-Matthews said.

The second contributing factor is related to the so-called “gig economy,” a system made popular by Uber, which hires independent contractors on a part-time basis instead of full-time employees. The part-time work is somewhat popular because it gives flexibility for employees to set their own hours, but doesn’t usually come with benefits typical in a full-time job, such as health insurance and retirement benefits.

“People who are underemployed can’t find full-time work and are driving part time,” Clayton Matthews said.

Thomas Harrington, of Hingham, has worked his whole life in the restaurant industry, but hasn’t found full-time work for years. So he’s picked up odd jobs, including driving for Uber and delivering food.

Harrington, 64, says he averages about three interviews per week at various restaurants, but believes most employers take one look at him and see someone who’s too old. Age discrimination is illegal under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, among other state laws. But both Flaherty and Harrington feel their age has worked against them in the hiring process.

“I’ve aged out of the system,” said Harrington, who adopted a 14-year-old daughter when she was 2. “I can’t afford not to work and I’m scared about what’s going to happen.”

A breakdown of underemployment by age was not immediately available, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average rate of unemployment for Massachusetts workers aged 65 years and older increased to 4.2 percent in 2018 compared to 2.6 percent in 2015. Unemployment among all other age groups fell during that same time period.

Harrington is concerned the trend could get worse as baby boomers continue to enter retirement age in droves. He says many of his peers don’t have enough money set aside to retire, and the stipend from Social Security is insufficient to survive in Massachusetts where the cost of living is high relative to other parts of the country.

“We should be retiring, but many of us will have to work until we drop,” Harrington said.

Dorrer says the best time to create policies to help the disenfranchised is during good economic times like the present. But it’s also the most difficult time to build momentum because most people feel like things are going relatively well, he added.

“We get lulled into complacency,” he said.

In 2017, Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, established a workforce-development program called Learn to Earn, which is designed to connect unemployed and underemployed people receiving public benefits to careers with stable incomes. The administration awarded five grants totaling $111,748 to organizations in Boston, Holyoke, Lawrence, Lowell and Worcester, and the state Legislature allocated an additional $1 million for the program in the current fiscal year.

But Dorrer says more could be done.

“This is really a time, given the cards that we’re holding, to come forward with creative legislation to address some of these problems and get ahead of the curve,” he said.

Harrington, who talked with Wicked Local minutes before entering a job interview in Boston, said not having a full-time job is scary because it makes him wonder how he will provide for his family. But it’s also sad, he said, because he’s not getting an opportunity to do something he’s done his whole life.

“I’ve never been so depressed in my entire life, knowing I can do the job and I’m not being given the chance,” he said.

Eli Sherman is an investigative and in-depth reporter at Wicked Local and GateHouse Media. Email him at esherman@wickedlocal.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman.

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